My Wet Patch

Every bird watcher needs a 'patch' and having left the wonderful Wanstead Flats last summer I have been looking for a new patch that I can bird, half-halfheartedly, once every few months.  My one allotted government sponsored hour of exercise a day during lock-down has enabled me to find such a place: the Aire Valley.  The Aire Valley is a big place, so I'll mostly be focusing on the six kilometre stretch of it between Riddlesden and Utley   As this area consists mostly of floodplains I have nicknamed it my Wet Patch. 

The Aire

The main geographical feature of the patch is the Aire river.

Photo Credit: Diego Torres

The Aire runs from Malham tarn to Airmyn, where it joins the Ouse.  It is 92 miles long, which makes it the longest river in the whole of the Aire Valley!  It may, or may not, be the four-thousand-and-thirty-eighth longest river in the world.  If you were to straighten out every bend in the river it would be 92 miles long!  Only much straighter.  That's longer than a double-decker bus!  Six kilometres of the river run between Riddlesden and Silsden, which are precisely the six kilometres we are concerning ourselves with here.  

The river is flanked by fields containing cows, sheep and golfers and it occasionally tries to kill them all by flooding.  Most of the land in this part of the valley is floodplain, or, as it's known locally "prime real estate."

During the cold, wet months, which is quite a lot of months in West Yorkshire, the river floods the neighboring fields to provide habitat for the soggier birds, such as geese, swans, waders and gulls.  In the spring warblers, buntings, finches and thrushes sing from the bushes on the waters edge while kingfishers, goosander and common sandpiper dart up and down the river itself.  This stretch also supports a few sand martin colonies.  The fields on either side often resound with the calls of curlew, lapwing and oystercatcher.

Silsden, Utley & Riddlesden

There are three towns/ villages in this part of the valley which come with their compliment of starlings, collard doves, house sparrows and filth pigeons.

Silsden is a small ex-industrial village, but you probably know it as the location in which the world's biggest onion was grown.  Grown by Vincent Throp in 2010, the mammoth allium was entered into the Guinness Book of Records weighing in at 6.4kg (about the same weight as 6.4kg of butter) and won the town international respect and acclaim.  A statue was erected to the gargantuan bulb and has been a place of pilgrimage ever since.

Riddlesden is a suburb of Keighley that was once a village in its own right and still maintains some of that 'suburb of Keighley' charm.  It was the breeding place for the Airedale Heifer, but so what.  The grounds of East Riddlesden Hall are, I guess, kind of okay.

Utley is in the middle of Silsden and Riddlesden.  People live here so that they can pretend they don't live in Keighley.  In the mid nineteenth century John Stewart Mill divided the village into High Utley and Low Utley, and it is the lower part that I'm including in this patch. This is also where I live.  It is also where my garden is...

Photo credit:  Mark Morton 

The railway that runs past the bottom of my garden, with its line of trees on either side, acts as a green corridor leading into Utley cemetery, meaning my garden is quite busy bird-wise; bullfinch, goldfinch, chaffinch, siskin, lesser redpoll, treecreeper, great spotted woodpecker, goldcrest, curlew and oyster catcher are all regularly seen in or around or over my garden. 

Utley cemetery

An operational cemetery where dog-walkers bring their pets to scat on the graves.  A good range of woodland in the trees and you can sometimes witness a good punch-up between a sparrowhawk and magpie.  A little past the cemetery, close to the dual carriage roundabout, where all the road works are, you know the place, is a little nameless pond with, sometimes, a duck.     
         
Keighley golf course

Home to a number of middle-class species of bird.  If you're lucky you might see... wait for it... a birdie!

Keighley golf course sits on the north bank of the Aire and you have to walk through it to get to the canal.  Mistle and song thrush, pheasants (not to be confused with peasants, who you definitely won't find here), oystercatchers, tree-creeper, grey wagtail, roe deer and spotted flycatcher.

Stockbridge nature reserve

Photo credit: Ray in Manilla 

At the eastern end of the Wet Patch is a small wetland nature reserve.  This is owned and maintained by Bradford Ornithological Group.  Only members are allowed in, and you have to know the secret handshake and password to be able to get in.  There's a nice hide facing a lake, reeds, scrapes, islands and a little wooded trail.

In the spring/ summer the reserve attracts reed and sedge warblers and whitethroat, as well as various finches and tits to the feeders.  Waders, such as snipe, common sandpiper and redshank stop over during the winter months.  And all sorts of other things pass over, and even stop to pop out a few kids, throughout the year.

Leeds - Liverpool canal

Mallards, Canada and Greylag geese.  Kingfisher if you're lucky.  Also a great dawn chorus form the bordering trees and fields.

Low wood

Photo credit: Daveynin

A small Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve along the side of the canal.  Teeming with life.  Treecreepers, nuthatch, jays, pied flycatchers, tawney owls, badgers and roe deer.  Sometimes face eating youths.  Lots of bird boxes around too.  Let's hope the wildlife is as successful at breeding as the local teenagers are.

Low Wood is governed by the mysterious "Low Wood Volunteers."  They live in the many burrows that dot the area and come out at night to have a bit of a tidy up and leave notes asking people not to litter.

Spring Crag Wood/ Alder Carr Wood

Host to strange trees which seem to grow a fruit that looks, and smells, like bags of dog scat.  In actual fact, believe it or not, these are actually bags of dog dirt!  But don't think ill of dog walkers, this is actually an ancient pagan offering to Mother Nature, that is kept alive by dog owners the nation over (who own dogs, so must love nature, right?)  It involves picking up the dog mess in a plastic bag, the responsible thing to do, and then hanging the bag on a tree or bush because, well, it's not their problem is it.  This not only fills an otherwise pleasant spot with stinking turd, but it also stuffs the planet full of damaging plastic.  I mean, the council doesn't put bins deep in the middle of the forest or miles into the moors, so what do you expect them to do?  The circle of life or something will sort it out.  Other variations of this noble practice include flinging your dog muck into a neighboring field, dumping it in the river, or rubbing it in the face of a newborn lamb.

Having said that, there is some great litter in Alder Carr Wood.

Photo credit: me.

Hillside

A steep climb up the northern wall of the valley.  Good views over the river - I can see my house from here etc.  Normally a good spot to see game birds, raptors, pipits and larks.

It's here that the patch boarders Ilkley Moor, so if I fancied making a day of it I could wander on to the moors and see posh people shooting things (or Moorons as I like to call them.)

It's mostly farms, so you're restricted to public footpaths.  There used to be a golf course here too, but it now belongs to the Scouts, which means, instead of dodging golf balls it's now arrows and throwing axes you have to watch out for.  The Scouts are rewilding much of the site, so it's going to be a good place to keep an eye on over the coming years.  Only - be aware - wandering around a children's play area with binoculars and a camera could attract suspicion.       

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So that's pretty much it for the patch.  It's a big old area, about 6km₂, but you can walk to any extreme of it from my house in an hour or less. It also contains a nice range of habitats, and a nice range of birds to go with it.